Dolby said he was just pleased that a piece of street architecture in Westbury had been put to good use. Ideas for their afterlife have included a shower, art installations, even a toilet. So far 350 boxes have been handed to parish councils. These are then shipped on to a charity shop to keep the phone box collection fresh.īT has received 770 applications for communities to "adopt a kiosk". There is a regular check on it to see if some titles are not moving. All sorts of interesting books turn up – manuals, picture books, good literary novels."Īnd unlike the library in Wells, the phone box library is open 365 days a year, 24 hours a day – and is lit at night. Our nearest library is Wells, four miles away, so if you don't want to go into the town but have run out of something to read, it's great you can use this. Nobody has yet been tempted by the audio book she left of Laurence Olivier reading Charles Dickens. She picked up a Penelope Lively the other day. She rejected the book on the life of Fred West and plumped for another American detective novel.įisher's neighbour, Angela Buchanan, strolled over to see what was new.
She was hoping to pick up a Michael Connelly book – "Some of the girls said there was one here" – but it had gone. Residents donated books to get the project going and it became an instant hit, all for an outlay of just £30.įisher popped across the road today to swap an Ian Rankin novel. A local business donated a sign and a wag added a "Silence please" notice. So the parish council bought the box, a Giles Gilbert Scott K6 design, for £1, and Dolby screwed the four shelves into place. She floated the idea at a village tea party in August and the concept was accepted on the spot. The scheme was the brainchild of resident Janet Fisher, who lives opposite the phone box. "Turnover is rapid and there's a good range of books, everything from reference books to biographies and blockbusters." Parish councillor Bob Dolby, who cleans and polishes the phone box/library with his wife, Lyn, beamed with pride. Young book fans were hunting around in the children's section – a big red box on the floor – for Roald Dahl and Horrid Henry favourites. Adults were bringing in thrillers, romances and true-crime books, leaving them on the four wooden shelves and choosing another to take home. Today, the small but perfectly formed Westbury book box was doing a brisk trade. Why not buy the phone box and use it to set up a mini-library? It is a mini-lending library for the residents of Little Shelford. “If people want to adopt a phone box in Banbury please contact us and we will see if we can open a new chapter in this running saga, and book worms in Banbury can review the situation and plot a new course for a library.Happily a bright spark in the Somerset village (population 800) hatched a clever plan to tackle both difficulties. The phone box on the High Street opened in May 2010. If we had ignored it and little Janet or John had been injured by a collapsing shelf and books there would have been hell to pay – right outside St John’s Church. We then had a complaint about the wobbly shelving from a Banbury resident and we can’t just ignore it. There were 1,093 calls made from this box in the past year. Val Empson, 71, launched the reading service withe her husband Bob, 72, but has been told she faces a 400 bill to apply for planning consent.
The former BT phone box in the village of Elsworth, Cambridgeshire was converted into a library four years ago and hosted more than 800 books. Unfortunately no one asked to use it for books. An old telephone box used as a library has been closed down because it needs planning permission. “This is a page turner because the flimsy, Heath Robinson shelf was put into a phone box that is very well used. In all 2,400 boxes have been adopted for £1 for all sorts of uses –book exchange, heart defibrillators, libraries, map sales, and an ale house. Just Bring your Own Phone and Leave the Rest to Us. We have opened libraries in phone boxes across the country with the cooperation of parish councils, local authorities and charities. We’ve partnered with Canada’s biggest network providers to give you the best plans. People in Banbury, who are no doubt very well read, may want to shelve their response until hearing the BT story. In response to the Twitter storm that started on Wednesday, under #SaveOurPhoneBoxLibrary, BT issued the following statement:Ī BT spokesman said: “We shouldn’t read too much into this. But now BT have confirmed that the phone box is being adopted by the local Council, and it looks certain that it will remain a dual-purpose phonebooth/library.
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